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> Daily existential crisis due to my own mortality I had this for a long time. The thing that cured it was that I remind myself every day how many days I shoul

> Daily existential crisis due to my own mortality I had this for a long time. The thing that cured it was that I remind myself every day how many days I should expect to live, how many of those days will be healthy enough to do anything, and what % of my remaining life and healthspan this year is. Even though it would seem this makes things worse, my experience is that it is the opposite. It is like tossing some eggshells in coffee - the bitterness goes down and things get a hell of a lot clearer. A few months after I started doing this, I stopped waffling on decisions and decision paralysis went away.

KronisLV 5y ago
Yep, of course, if worries like that prevent a person from actually living their life and being a functional member of society (in whatever capacity they wish to be one), then it's probably helpful to seek counseling or additional help with that. However, if things aren't so dire, being aware of the approximate time that you have left might actually motivate you to focus on what you want to achieve etc. The first time i saw a "life calendar", it felt a bit macabre, but upon further consideration, that's just one form of practicing mindfulness. At the very least, it seems to be working out nicely for some rather productive people out there, like Randall Thomas (you can see one such calendar in the background in some of his videos about programming his own game engine): https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos Personally, that awareness helped me deal with worrying about what my peers would think of me and so on. I mean, come on, we're all hurtling through space on an impeccable piece of rock with our entire existence being a splendid display of maths, physics and chemistry, yet even so it's just a blip on the overall time scale of the universe. Why should i worry in the slightest about what my clothes look like, or the stupid thing that i said 4 years ago, that no one even cares about? I'd still call what i'm experiencing a "crisis" since the underlying problem of being mortal isn't really solved and might not be in my life span, but it can definitely be interpreted as something not wholly negative. That said, i bet one can write a lot of amazing fiction after pondering the eventual point in time where it could reasonably be solved. At first, imagine our elderly being able to live out their days in peak physical shape, without being forced to witness their bodies breaking down with age. Then, imagine those few who'd actually want that sort of thing, being able to live for thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Oh, how much one could learn. Oh, how much you'd start caring about the long term impacts of your actions, then. Truly an interesting topic!
- foobiekr 5y ago
  Man, it must be nice to have that calendar only 1/4th full.

KronisLV 5y ago

Yep, of course, if worries like that prevent a person from actually living their life and being a functional member of society (in whatever capacity they wish to be one), then it's probably helpful to seek counseling or additional help with that. However, if things aren't so dire, being aware of the approximate time that you have left might actually motivate you to focus on what you want to achieve etc. The first time i saw a "life calendar", it felt a bit macabre, but upon further consideration, that's just one form of practicing mindfulness. At the very least, it seems to be working out nicely for some rather productive people out there, like Randall Thomas (you can see one such calendar in the background in some of his videos about programming his own game engine): https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/RandallThomas/videos Personally, that awareness helped me deal with worrying about what my peers would think of me and so on. I mean, come on, we're all hurtling through space on an impeccable piece of rock with our entire existence being a splendid display of maths, physics and chemistry, yet even so it's just a blip on the overall time scale of the universe. Why should i worry in the slightest about what my clothes look like, or the stupid thing that i said 4 years ago, that no one even cares about? I'd still call what i'm experiencing a "crisis" since the underlying problem of being mortal isn't really solved and might not be in my life span, but it can definitely be interpreted as something not wholly negative. That said, i bet one can write a lot of amazing fiction after pondering the eventual point in time where it could reasonably be solved. At first, imagine our elderly being able to live out their days in peak physical shape, without being forced to witness their bodies breaking down with age. Then, imagine those few who'd actually want that sort of thing, being able to live for thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Oh, how much one could learn. Oh, how much you'd start caring about the long term impacts of your actions, then. Truly an interesting topic!

foobiekr 5y ago
Man, it must be nice to have that calendar only 1/4th full.